


His Greatest Power, Broken

by coffeeinthewater



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Hurt Charles Xavier, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27720551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeinthewater/pseuds/coffeeinthewater
Summary: It was always there, never to be turned off or silenced. The empathy was his weakness, the telepathy his power. If you knew someone was grieving, depressed, anxious, wouldn't you try to help? But, it was emotionally tiring, endless, the amount of suffering. He built mental walls to provide silence, solace, for himself, that were shattered after Cuba. He didn't rebuild them.Hank saw Charles watching the serum's transformation of Hank's body, before Charles looked away, down at his legs in the wheelchair. “I’m working on yours Charles. It’s coming along." / Set during XM: DOFP
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	His Greatest Power, Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by an interview where James McAvoy was talking about Charles’ empathy as his greatest power. Although, I imagine Charles embraced it to help people, then despised it after Cuba. This is a brief look into Charles's angst and past struggle with empathy, before Hank perfects Charles's serum. 
> 
> Originally written in 2015 when I first discovered the X-Men universe, I wrote this because I had a lot of feels about Charles. Not a super strong plot, and more of a cathartic rambling. I honestly don't remember if I uploaded this on ao3 or not, (so if it seems familiar, it's probably mine from years ago. maybe?). Either way, this is a new version with edits.

Charles looked at Hank's transformation with envy. The blur fur was fading into skin and his glasses grew bigger on his face without moving as it became narrower. The cause of Hank’s happiness and Charles’ jealousy was a thin needle in Hank’s vein, pushing out the liquid that resulted in a shift of their friendship. Hank saw Charles watching him before Charles looked away, down at his unmoving legs in the wheelchair.

“I’m working on yours Charles. It’s coming along,” Hank said in earnest.

Charles knew it was the truth, he saw the lab notes through Hank’s mind, his tiredness from constant research. But he also knew that it would be a while unless there was a breakthrough. Charles nodded curtly in silence before wheeling himself away to another part of the house, not wanting to discuss it anymore. It was clear Charles was troubled. He felt broken. In all senses, his soul was shattered. He _knew_ he wasn’t abandoned because Hank was still there. Alex was too before he was drafted. But, it didn’t mean he didn’t _feel_ abandoned. By the ones he loved: Raven and Erik. After fixating on the memories on Cuba, years later he still worked to block it out of his mind. He still felt the hurt, the pain, but pushed himself away before he dwelled too long.

He read the news about Magneto with contempt before throwing it out. Sometimes Raven was mentioned as Mystique. At first, Charles really tried to help people. To take his mind off his own situation, he threw himself into his work, the new school, the other mutants, but it slowly faded as well. And he felt them anew - the emotions caused from the past, the new war, and the failing school, lingering, fresh and stale at the same time. And he had always felt things more deeply than others. The only other time Charles had felt anything nearly as close to what he was feeling now was in the same mansion as a teenager. As he aged from a scared kid with a new power and friend in Raven to awkward boy, the telepathy took a toll on him.

He felt so much. It overwhelmed him, much like it had been recently. And he cared _so much._ He couldn't turn it off. When he was younger, he would make excuses to not go into town, hating to see Raven’s disappointed face, but unwilling to face the abundance of minds there. The people milling around caused his head to ache, his heart to split. They didn’t realize what they were doing, but Charles felt it. He felt all of it.

They were thinking. He heard it. Anger, love, excitement, loneliness. It was because of the extreme feelings of the people in the nearby town that Charles began to construct mental shields for himself. He could handle love, caring, happiness, even sadness. He hated jealousy, worry, grief and loss. Sudden waves of a strong emotion would wash over him while walking down the street, unseemingly, coming from a person he couldn’t see. It often pierced his head with a sudden pain. It made him feel the things they felt. And often, he couldn't do anything about it. It was empathy, he knew, amplified by telepathy.

He was a young boy feeling the weight and built up decade-old emotions of others much older than him, or even the tragic life events that fell upon people younger than him too. It was a miracle he didn’t break. Even at the supposed sanctuary of his house, it would strike. The gardener or repair man would render Charles with a crippling headache when they paused at their work to pursue a strong emotional thought, causing him a brief emotional turmoil. Charles wasn’t an empath, but some days he felt like he almost could be if it weren’t for the thoughts and voices that raced out at him. So for his own sake, he constructed shields to keep them out. At the moment, admittedly his shields were weak. Not rebuilding them or patching them up so the emotions bled through was as much of a drug addiction as the alcohol was. Admittedly, he was unfocused.

As a young man, he locked away his own strong feelings in a tight box in a corner of his mind so they didn’t leak out onto Raven or any others he came in contact with by accident. This was also a side effect of his power, the emotional bleed. As he became older, he realized the extent of this. While growing up, he didn’t mean to make his teacher cry when other boys had been particularly mean to him. And he felt even worse, projecting his sadness onto an otherwise jubilant teacher. His power, he then knew, was overwhelming.

It was always there, never to be turned off or silenced. It was difficult to even dull. On the verge of becoming a young adult, he made it his quest to help people. Hope was as powerful as he was. The empathy was his weakness but it made him a superhero, he supposed. He had to help people. Whenever he was out in public, he couldn’t help but seek out a person who was emotionally shaky. He would comfort them and calm them, silently, sometimes verbally. Charles gave then a telepathic nudge or suggestion, but more often than not he physically went up and did a kind act. He gave a compliment or went out of his way to pick something up for a young woman. He greeted men. He felt it was his obligation. If you knew someone was grieving, depressed, anxious, wouldn't you try to help?

He felt their feelings along with hearing their thoughts. He felt their minds in his own. So many people felt so many different things. People were so complex. They were beautiful. And they often didn’t know it. The depth of it all made him stronger, but it also hardened him. It was frustrating, not being able to help everyone. It was nauseating how many bad things people had happen to them. His telepathy allowed him access to the most important thing in a human.

But, it was emotionally tiring. Even when he tried to block out the voices, he still always felt emotion in his chest and soul. He felt their pain and their love. He built mental walls to provide silence, solace, for himself, that were shattered after Cuba. He didn't rebuild them. Charles’s frayed and stretched mind, his weak shields, and his unhealthy alcohol as a suppressant led to a downward spiral. His heart was broken. His own thoughts alone were overbearing. With so much brokenness inside himself, he couldn't bare to deal with Hank’s or even the nearest neighbor.

What good did empathy do for him now? He felt numb. And he wanted to be numb, the alcohol cellar nearly empty with his efforts. He didn't want to hear. He didn't want to help anymore. It hurt, and never ending. He wanted to be left alone.

A week later Hank made a breakthrough. There had been no trial period, just one successful test. As Hank ran up from his lab to report the news, Charles rolled out to the hallway.

“Charles I-,” Hank began.

“I know,” Charles said softly, in awe of the man’s brilliance. Hank shuffled for a moment before pulling out a shiny needle and laying it in his hand, in Charles’ reach. Charles admired it.

“It’s unique, different from mine. You should be able to walk, but well, I-I think there's a possibility you’ll lose your powers as long as you take the serum,” Hank explained with a grimace. Hank had thought the depression, the sleepless nights, and the pain was an effect of his legs and the wheelchair. Of the PTSD. Of the scar in his lower back. And it was, but it was more too. It was his telepathy. The constant noise was too much. The voices were too loud. The secondhand emotions nearly torture when he wanted to not even feel his own. The memories were too easy to access. He was tired of it all. Of the emotions and even the emptiness.

"I want it now."

"No, Charles, it needs more tests. I just came up to tell you the news," Hank said.

Charles twisted the vial in his hand.

"Hank," he said, his voice nearly breaking. "Please, I want to try it now." If he took this serum, finally, Charles would get some quiet. There would no more be a dull roar. It would be pure silence. Charles paused.

In the end, he reached for the amber liquid gold and Hank didn't stop him.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write this as what was happening a year or so before Logan arrived in DOFP. Kind of an angsty look into Charles's background with empathy and telepathy, suggesting his empathy was his greatest power when he was strong but his greatest weakness when he was not. Obviously, he went through much more, but this was maybe another underlying component of his post-Cuba attitude. Just an idea! What do you think?


End file.
